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I’ve been very, very critical of a self-proclaimed “cancer researcher” named David H. Gorski, who is not a biologist but somehow has managed over the last few years to treat Dr. Stanislaw R. Burzynski as his own “Personalized mud-targeted therapy for dummies,” target

Perhaps it’s because Dr. Gorski was not necessarily flattering with his descriptions of some of the institutions he’s been associated with, which could lead to some embarrassing situations, saaayyy … around the water cooler (or at any function(s) or reunion(s) involving any of them)

(Oopsie !)

In Practice Since: 1999

(So, about 14 years, nowhere close to as long as his “fave” subject: Dr. Stanislaw R. Burzynski)

“The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute has announced the winners of its 2012 Strategic Research Initiative Grants, which fund innovative intra- and inter-programmatic projects, which exhibit great potential in leading to multi-investigator grants.”

“Merola, not surprisingly, was completely intellectually dishonest and never mentioned this “recantation” of his “conversion” in the video.”

Gorski, maybe Eric had a “premonition” that I would return my attention to one bottom-feeding mud cat, or maybe he was suspicious of any story having anything to do with a skeptic doing something after 3 days

“The last 15 minutes of the film had a lot more hostility towards skeptics, beginning with Fabio saying this:”

“You know, if you are still skeptical, in my book you are ignorant, because, I’m telling you, what’s count is action.”

“Why?”

Gorski, speaking of “ignorant“…

“The U.S. v. Article’~ court stated that the FDA’s responsibility was to protect the ultimate consumer, which included protection of “the ignorant, the unthinking and the credulous.”‘

“the ignorant,

the unthinking

and the credulous.”‘

Gorski, which are YOU ?

“Well, in what is perhaps the most amusing exaggeration, a talking point no doubt fed straight from Stanislaw Burzynski to Eric Merola to Fabio Lanzoni, Fabio declares that Burzynski submitted “two and a half million pages” of clinical trials to the FDA and demands, “What more do they want of him?”

“Well, some real science indicating that antineoplastons have significant anti-tumor activity against the cancers tested, as well as full reports of the results of actual clinical trials showing outcomes data would be nice.”

Gorski, what difference would it make ?

You are such a coward that you do nothing but make excuse after excuse upon excuses for NOT doing “in-depth” reviews of Dr. Burzynski’s 2003-onward phase 2 clinical trials preliminary reports

“If the FDA couldn’t find this much on this guy, you think just a regular skeptic’s going to find something?”

“And plus, all the skeptics out there.”

“Who they are?”

“Probably people —I tell you, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out—or they’re people being paid by the pharmaceutical industry.”

“Or they are people with no life.”

“So my advice to them:”

“Get a life.”

“You know.”

“Get a life.”

“Dr. Burzynski is busy saving lives.”

“Don’t.”

“Waste.”

“Any.”

“More.”

“Of.”

“His.”

“Time.”

“Yes, he really said that and really did emphasize the last sentence.”

“Go to 38:20 if you don’t believe me and see it for yourself.”

“Seeing Fabio’s demeanor and hearing his intonations will make you appreciate that what he said was far more insulting and offensive than mere words typed on a blog can adequately convey.”

“So, in one brief paragraph, we have Fabio using the pharma shill gambit, a blatant use of the logical fallacy known as poisoning the well, along with just plain insults, in which he portrays skeptics not-so-subtly as basement dwelling young adults who aren’t married, don’t have any children, and are basically, unlike the apparent magnificence that is Fabio, geeks, nerds, dorks, pointy-headed science types.”

“I suppose I should be grateful to some extent, though, that Fabio restrained himself from likening Burzynski patients and families to rape victims being told they have to rally for stronger laws against rape, an analogy that Steve Siegel used (at around 45:45).”

“Oh, sure, he apologizes for the poor analogy, but then he goes and uses the rape analogy analogy anyway.”

“That analogy isn’t just a poor analogy; it’s highly offensive.”

“A few minutes later (48:45), Siegel says:”

“We have been under such pressure from the skeptics, and patients are literally losing time, not going to see Burzynski, wasting time.”

“Children are not getting to see him.”

“You can join us on Twitter @BurzynskiSaves, where a number of us are speaking back to the skeptics, because there’s a lot of negativity up there.”

“Wasting The Great Man’s time and forcing him to swat at fleas and at the same time killing patients.”

“Yes, this is the message that Merola is promoting through these Burzynski patients.”

“It’s utterly despicable, of course, a tactic compared (quite appropriately, I think) to using cancer patients as human shields against criticism.”

Gorski, let me advise you as to what is “utterly despicable“

“Utterly despicable” is when, in the Twenty-First Century, an “alleged” oncologist launches as much mud as possible at a biologist, in the hopes that some of it might stick, seemingly forgetting that the Eighteenth Century was the:

“Indeed, consistent with the crank nature of the movement, Fabio even repeatedly issued challenges for a debate on live television with him and Burzynski on one side and a skeptics or skeptics on the other side, a favored crank ploy that I wrote about just a couple of weeks ago, when antivaccinationist Andrew Wakefield used it.”

“Let me tell you that it was a challenge that almost made me think about violating my general personal rule that I don’t debate cranks.”

If I were a student or parent of a student attending Wayne State University – School of Medicine, I would NOT want any educational ties with Gorski, since I would be concerned that his teaching style “mirrors” his blog style

What kind of an individual with a “fragile eggshell mind,” is so egomaniacal that they think that those of us who remember the past are condemned to repeat it?

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
Remark attributed to Abraham Lincoln

“In any case, lacking any compelling clinical trial data (or at least, never having published a completed phase 2 clinical trial), despite having registered over 60 such trials, …”

Gorski, again, brings out this old, dank, tired, dirt-clod, and tries to heave it again

It is obvious on its face as to why Gorski booted me off his blog

Gorski is a coward, and a “little man“

I showed Gorski and his “Oracolytes” were on the leading edge of:

NO

Citation(s)

Reference(s)

Link(s)

in support of their:

Misinformation

Disinformation

MisDisInformation

Misdirection

Dissimulation

“So it was that when I wrote about Fabio Lanzoni teaming up with Eric Merola to promote Stanislaw Burzynski, multiple people asked me about a new patient, one who appeared for the first time in a Burzynski advertisement—excuse me, Q&A by Eric Merola.”

“This is a patient who of late has been very active on Twitter both attacking Burzynski critics and singing the praises of Stanislaw Burzynski, all the while touting how Burzynski cured her stage IV triple negative breast cancer.”

“She has also recently become one of the main users of the @BurzynskiSaves Twitter account, which formerly was run by someone whom many Burzynski critics suspected to be an employee of the Burzynski Clinic but was recently apparently handed off to a cadre of Burzynski patients, as revealed in Merola’s last video.”

“Clearly, she is a new recruit to the patients whose testimonials Burzynski and Merola use to promote the Burzynski Clinic.”

“Her story, that Burzynski saved her from stage IV triple negative breast cancer, seems very compelling at first glance.”

“But is it?”

“It is with a bit of trepidation that I tackle this case, because, no matter how careful, respectful, and nuanced I am, I can reasonably expect that I will be accused of “attacking” this patient.”

“It is even possible that someone will call my university again to complain about me.”

Gorski, someone should call and ask if you are as incompetent there as you are here

“Of course, I’m doing nothing of the sort and have no doubt that this patient genuinely believes that Burzynski saved her.”

“My analysis of her anecdote, however, leads me to believe that she is probably not correct in attributing her survival to Burzynski.”

“I also know that to a patient who is not an expert in cancer, a story like hers can seem all the world as though Burzynski really did save her and realize that I’m not going to change this patient’s mind, no matter what I say.”

Gorski, are you an “expert in cancer” ?

“She was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer three years ago, and that happens to be my area of specialty.”

So, now we are getting somewhere

Cancer research is NOT your “area of specialty“

“Triple negative breast cancer is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer that lacks hormone receptors or the HER2 receptor.”

“Stage for stage, it tends to have a worse prognosis, with a higher recurrence rate and lower survival rate.”

Worse, contrary to hormone receptor positive breast cancer, which can be treated with Tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors (drugs that block the action of estrogen) or HER2-positive tumors, which can be treated like Herceptin, triple negative breast cancer has no molecular targets for therapy that have been identified and validated yet.

“As a result cytotoxic chemotherapy is the only systemic treatment.”

“It turns out that triple negative breast cancer is often very sensitive to chemotherapy—more so than estrogen receptor-positive cancers, by and large; the problem is that it rapidly develops resistance.”

“There’s also a version of her story on Cancer Compass, which touts itself as a website that advocates the use of alternative cancer therapies.”

” (No kidding.)”

“On the Burzynski Patient Group website, the story is told thusly:”

“In Nov. 2009 I developed pneumonia and had a chest x-ray which showed a mass on the left upper lobe of my lung.”

” This proved to be cancer.”

“The PET scan leading up to the lung surgery, showed masses in my breasts.”

I had a left upper lobectomy in Nov. 2009, and bilateral mastectomies with reconstruction in Feb. 2010.”

“I chose to take the holistic route, as I have seen the ravages that traditional chemotherapy inflict on the human body in the patients I have cared for.”

” I will attach the link to the “Cancer Note” I wrote on Facebook which describes the steps I took to build up my immune system.”

” (Let me know if the link doesn’t work, and I will cut and paste it to you.”

“A few weeks ago I had a local recurrence of my breast cancer and had surgery to remove it.”

“This led me to call the Burzynski Clinic”

“It’s not entirely clear from the account above (at least not to me) whether Ms. Herron had an early stage lung cancer successfully treated surgically and then was soon after diagnosed with breast cancer

“(in other words, had two independent primary tumors, each successfully treated with surgery)”

“or whether her lung cancer was actually a metastasis from her breast cancer that was resected, followed by her diagnosis with breast cancer and successful surgical treatment”

“(i.e., stage 4 disease).”

“Her Cancer Compass account doesn’t help in this regard, as it concentrates only on her treatment with Burzynski”

“(and, as we will see, a whole lot of other woo),”

“and her initial treatment was before she found her way to the Burzynski Clinic, although she does say she has “thanked my cancers (lung and breast) for all they have taught me, and have told them they can leave now,” which sounds as though she had a lung cancer and a breast cancer.”

“A little deeper digging was required.”

“It turns out that there is more information on this part of Ms. Herron’s treatment odyssey on Facebook, contemporaneously dated April 2010.”

“In a comment, she writes:”

“My cancers were discovered in Nov. 2009.”

“By MIRACULOUS good luck I got the flu (probably H1N1).”

” I got pneumonia, went to urgent care and they did a chest x-ray, which showed a mass on my left upper lobe.

“I had a CT the next day, a thoracic surgeon consult 3 days after that, then a CT guided biopsy, a PET scan and a pulmonary function study done in the 3 days after that, and the next week had a mediastinoscopy/bronchoscopy and video assisted left upper lobectomy”

“(12 days after the first x-ray- an example of the allegedly “terrible” healthcare system we have.”

“In Canada I might just now be seeing the thoracic surgeon or having the PET scan.”

“I am SOOOOO grateful to live here!!!).”

“The PET scan I had (where they inject radioactive sugar and do a CT looking for metastastis) showed no lung metastasis, but a weird area on my left breast.”

“After I recovered from the lung surgery, I had a mammogram, and an ultrasound guided biopsy”

“(it turned out to be another, seperate cancer from the lung).”

“I then had an MRI and underwent bilateral mastectomies with reconstruction in Feb…”

“My final reconstruction surgery will be May 4th- the new and improved me, breast cancer free.”

“What a miracle that flu was!!!!!”

“I would have been walking around oblivious to both cancers if I hadn’t needed that initial chest x-ray for the flu.”

” My breast cancer turned out to be in both breasts as well.”

“Amazing!! It never showed up on mammograms, (35% of breast tumors don’t- surprise to me!)”

“I went the naturopathic route vs/ chemo and radiation, because as an RN for 34 years, I have seen the ravages the traditional route can cause.”

“This clarifies things.”

“Up to this point, these accounts are most consistent with two separate primaries, one an adenocarcinoma of the lung, which was resected thoracoscopically, and a second cancer in the left breast, arising from the breast.”

“Consequently, up until this point, what we most likely have is a woman who was unfortunate enough to have two different cancers in two different organs, but fortunate enough that both of them were sufficiently early stage that they could be successfully resected surgically.”

“Like so many testimonials I’ve discussed before, she refused chemotherapy and radiation in favor of lots and lots of woo, including naturopathy, massive changes in diet, green tea, juicing, Resveratol, reiki, “detox,” and acupuncture.”

“(And that’s not all.)”

“As is so frequently the case, by refusing adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation, which are the “icing on the cake” for surgery in breast cancer that decrease the chance of recurrence, she decreased her chance of survival.”

“I did a bit of prognosticating using Adjuvant! Online, which allows me to estimate 10 year survival rates for cancers with various characteristics.”

“If Ms. Herron had a stage III cancer, that means it was either rather large (greater than 5 cm), had a lot of positive lymph nodes, or both.”

“According to Adjuvant!

Online estimation, a patient with a stage III triple negative cancer treated with surgery alone has, depending on the specific features of the tumor, between a 24% and 57% chance of being alive in 10 years.”

(I ran the estimate using the worse features I could think of consistent with a stage III triple negative cancer, ran it again with the most favorable features I could think of, using an estimate of Ms. Herron’s age to be around 58 based on her time in nursing.)”

“Sure, those odds aren’t fantastic, and I doubt she’s at the 57% end of the scale, but even though Ms. Herron’s odds were most likely less than 50-50 without adjuvant chemotherapy, they weren’t so horrible that it would be considered highly unusual or rare for her to have survived.”

“So why did she go to the Burzynski Clinic?”

“She tells the tale in multiple places.”

“First, here’s a continuation of the account on the Burzynski Scam blog:”

“I developed a small localized recurrence in Aug. 2011.”

“After surgery, I went to the Burzynski Clinic in Sept. 2011.”

“They ordered a PET scan which discovered my T-2 spinal metastasis.”

“I started on his treatment and was followed up by an oncologist near me who works with Dr, Burzynski for my monthly labs and an injection.”

“Twelve weeks, almost to the day of starting his treatment, my cancer was gone, as verified by my follow up PET scan Dec. 22, 2011.”

“The radiologist had the before and after films up and showed me that it was all gone and that “there is no active cancer anywhere”.”

“This treatment had no side effects, I did not lose my hair, and my monthly labs remained normal.”

“How many other cancer treatments out there can say this”

” NONE!!!”

“And on the Burzynski Patient Group website:”

“I was encouraged to stay a few more days.”

“A whirlwind of actions occurred the next 2 1/2 days.”

“I had thorough blood and urine work-ups, as well as an echo-cardiogram and a PET scan, which was miraculous, for the PET scan showed a metastasis to T-2 on my spine.”

I was started on his medication on the first day and then low dose chemo for my metastasis and an injectable to keep my bone strong and prevent further metastasis.”

“It is a miracle!!”

“I would not have known about this situation until it had spread further, or until, possibly, my spine had a pathological fracture, which, that high up, could have caused quadriplegic, so I can, and I DO, say that Dr. B and his team have already saved my life by finding this tumor and getting me on their gene targeted regimen to remove it.”

“So about a year and a half after Ms. Herron’s radical surgery rendered her disease-free, she developed a local recurrence.”

“This is unfortunate.”

0We also don’t know for sure whether she underwent radiation therapy, although the story sounds very much as though she did not.”

“Radiation therapy is indicated after surgery for a stage III breast cancer, because that can greatly decrease the risk of a local recurrence, even after a mastectomy.”

“In any case, this recurrence must have been small, localized, and amenable to resection with a wide margin.”

“In this, Ms. Herron was again fortunate, because all too frequently chest wall recurrences like hers presage metastatic disease, and all too often they tend to be too extensive to be amenable to a simple surgical excision.”

“But, wait, you say.”

“Wasn’t the spine lesion on PET metastatic disease?”

“The answer to that question is:”

“Maybe.”

“We don’t know.”

“Why do I say that?”

“The reason is simple.”

“As far as I can tell, there was never a tissue diagnosis to prove that that T2 lesion was in fact metastatic disease to the spine.”

Most oncologists will not treat a breast cancer patient for metastatic disease without first doing everything within reason to obtain a biopsy and thus proof that the lesion is a metastasis.”

“Just as important, tissue allows the oncologist to look at markers; sometimes estrogen receptor-positive tumors turn negative as they metastasize or sometimes the HER2 status changes.”

“Such information is very useful for planning therapy, rather than just basing additional therapy on the original surgical specimen.”

“I’ve looked around, and nowhere have I been able to find an account of Ms. Herron’s treatment in which Burzynski got a biopsy of the spinal lesion before initiating treatment.”

“PET scans can be misleading; they can have a not insignificant false positive rate.”

“Actually, in fact, depending upon the clinical situation, they can have a high false positive rate.”

“There are lesions on PET that can mimic metastasis.”

“For instance, fibrous dysplasia of the bone can mimic skeletal metastases, as can osteonecrosis, inflammatory lesions, and others.”

“Quite frequently, these lesions disappear when a patient is rescanned a few months later.”

“True, there are exceptions to the “tissue rule,” such as if it’s unsafe to biopsy due to location or patient comorbid conditions or if the lesion is so characteristic on an MRI or CT of the involved vertebrae that there is no doubt.”

“(One notes that no mention of imaging of the spine is made other than the PET scan.)”

“Even accepting those exceptions, a tissue diagnosis would still be essential, especially in this case, before starting treatment of bone metastases.”

“Remember, this is a patient who apparently had two different cancers diagnosed three and a half years ago.”

“Although less likely than breast, the spine metastasis, if it was real, could have been lung cancer.”

“However, despite every indication for obtaining a tissue diagnosis, as far as I can tell Burzynski apparently never got a biopsy of the lesion detected on PET scan before beginning treatment in order to confirm metastatic disease and identify tissue type.”

“In retrospect, given the clinical behavior of this “metastasis,” most likely what happened is that Burzynski treated a false positive PET lesion, and it did what nearly all false positive PET lesions do:”

“It disappeared within a few months.”

“Alternatively, it is possible that this lesion was a metastasis and that the chemotherapy that Burzynski administered shrank the tumor to microscopic disease, but, most likely, did not eliminate it entirely.”

“Personally, I’d prefer the first possibility over the second.”

“No, the reason is not because it would mean that Burzynski’s “personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy” doesn’t work, but because the first possibility would imply a good chance of long term survival for Ms. Herron”

“The second possibility would be much less favorable for her; it would mean that, sooner or later, her cancer will likely recur.”

” I do not want that to be the case.”

“Regardless of my wishes and whatever the case really is, without a report of a tissue diagnosis, it’s impossible to distinguish between the two possibilities”

“The point, of course, is that Ms. Herron’s case, like virtually every other Burzynski patient case I’ve analyzed, is not convincing evidence for an antitumor effect due to Burzynski’s treatment, although it is also possible that her story could mean an antitumor effect due to Burzynski’s “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to combining chemotherapy and targeted therapies.”

“As is always the case whenever Burzynski mixes and matches chemotherapy and targeted therapies, he might have gotten lucky, and Ms. Herron’s tumor was responsive to the cocktail.”

“Without a lot more information, we just can’t tell which possibility is most likely.”

“We can tell, however, that it’s unlikely that Burzynski is the cause of Ms. Herron’s good fortune.”

“Finally, Ms. Herron is not undergoing antineoplaston therapy, but rather Burzynski’s “gene-targeted therapy.””

“This led me to wonder:”

“On what basis is he “targeting” his therapy?”

“As I’ve recounted before, Burzynski usually sends off blood and tissue samples to Caris for testing.”

“The Caris Target Now™ test, which since my discussion of Burzynski’s “personalized therapy” appears to have been renamed Caris Molecular Intelligence and is now available at more levels of service”

“(although its reports look much the same to me),”

“is nothing unique to the Burzynski Clinic.”

“Anyone who is willing to pay for it can have it, and the report will be the same.”

“Given that Burzynski appears not to have gotten tissue before treating Ms. Herron, what did he send to Caris for testing?”

“Maybe he sent blocks from her original tumor.”

“Who knows?”

“In any event, there is as yet no convincing evidence that the Caris tests (or any of the other competing tests) result in better outcomes.”

“I’d like to conclude by saying that I wish Ms. Herron well.”

“Really, I do, despite her intemperate behavior on Twitter.”

“That’s actually why I hope that Burzynski really did treat a false positive PET lesion, because that explanation for her good fortune would be most consistent with its continuing indefinitely, in contrast to an actual treatment effect, which would imply eventual relapse.”

“When it comes to Burzynski, on the other hand, I’m not nearly so benevolent.”

“In my ever-Insolent opinion, he and his propagandist Eric Merola are cynically using patients like Ms. Herron as human shields to deflect criticism.”

“I can put up with a lot from cancer patients, even Burzynski cancer patients, and never respond in kind.”

Tune to WJR (760 AM) from 8:10 to 8:30 a.m. Oct. 3 to listen to David Gorski, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Surgery for the Wayne State University School of Medicine and co-leader of the Breast Cancer Multidisciplinary Group and Breast Cancer Biology Program at Karmanos Cancer Institute, and breast cancer survivor Lillie Manns as they take part in a panel discussion about the disease with on-air personality Warren Pierce.

The broadcast is being done in observance of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Dr. Gorski will discuss the latest controversy about mammography screening guidelines based on two recent Scandinavian studies, as well as general information about breast cancer.

Manns, a Karmanos patient taking part in a clinical trial under the guidance of Patricia LoRusso, D.O., professor of Internal Medicine at the School of Medicine, will talk about her own experience with breast cancer.

Ahhh … anecdote

The third panelist is Mary Flynn, Ph.D., a nutrition researcher from Brown University, who will discuss the importance of good nutrition to prevent and fight the disease.